Category Archives: Art

Sep 02 2014
Leave a comment
Art

Artist in Training – Part 3

After a brief break – heh – this is the third post in the continuing series where I attempt to get better at art. This time I have two pieces to show you, and of course a video. This was actually done in 2012 so it has taken a while for me to get this online, but it’s the 11th anniversary of this blog today so I thought I better put something up. I actually have some brand new stuff coming, I wonder if I can post it sooner than with a 2 year gap?

I decided to paint / draw* Nelson’s column and the scene around it in Trafalgar Square.

5-6x

Having drawn this I decided to add a person in the foreground, I decided to hive off the picture into a copy so that I could easily go back if it didn’t work.
Here’s the picture with the person added.

6-6x

I’m still not sure if the man is the right thing to have added, but I think the composition without the man is certainly missing something from the foreground. Interestingly when I tweeted this picture some people thought the man was walking towards the viewer and some away, any thoughts?

Here’s the video

* This is really getting annoying now isn’t it. I might just say paint, would that be ok?

Sep 09 2013
Leave a comment
Art, Articles

Me

Here was me, back in the day before I had a blog

sidealex

And here is me now…

image (2)

I’ve hardly changed!

Sep 02 2013
3 Comments
Art Image

After Patrick Caulfield

Image

Aug 29 2012
2 Comments
Art

Artist in training – Part 2

This is the second post in the continuing series where I attempt to get better at art. I have another drawpaint* that I have done.

This is a view of our back garden. The first one of these that I did was completely from imagination. This is an attempt at real life which, it turns out, is a bit harder.

As before there is a video available here of how it was done:

*This is the best I can do for a name to describe these kind of paintings that are done by drawing on the iPad.

Jul 25 2012
1 Comment
Art, Articles

Artist in training – Part 1

People sometimes ask me, how do you have time to do all of these things? I tend to tell them that the answer is that a) a lot of things take a lot less time to do than you’d think, b) mainly it’s by just getting on and doing them, and c) practice.

I think a lot of people say, “oh I would like to be good at such an such” but don’t do anything about it because doing something about it would take a nebulous amount of time. I always think, I’d like to be good at this in about x years, gosh that’s not very long, I better start practicing if I’m going to be ready by then.

I’ve always been a little self-conscious about my poor ability with art (performance art I’m ok with). And as Nina grows up I’d like to be better at drawing and painting. So I think that over the next five years I’d like to be able to become competent at drawing and painting. There’s only one way to do this, practice.

So here’s the first picture I’ve created since I was at school:

It was done on the iPad so you can actually see a recording of how the painting* was constructed using the excellent app Brushes.

*Is it a painting? Is it a drawing? It feels more like you are drawing a painting?